August 2002 | fiction
a short story by Marian Wilson
([email]po****@*****nk.com[/email])
Gerald dropped a box of rat poison into the hole and grinned. He was sure that stupid fox hid her babies there. “Damn varmints,” he muttered through his gapped teeth.
Gerald was a hunter and it didn’t matter for what: ground birds, squirrels, rabbits. He kept some of them for meat. It didn’t take much to get by, no wife or kids to feed. Some people shoot for the racks, then create furniture of balanced glass over a maze of antlers. Others say they like the taste of game. Gerald didn’t try to fool anyone with excuses. He just liked the hunt, the challenge of the kill.
It was before elk season ended and deer season began. He was polishing his rifle when he heard scratching. Through the window, he saw her. The fox! She was a scrawny thing, no bigger than his dad’s old heeler mix. He grabbed his gun. As he stepped outside, a little speck of gray tumbled over the knoll. Gerald ran with his boots unbuckled and his flannel shirt flapping in the breeze. He thought he saw her to the left, just a flash, a blur. He headed over a slab of granite, toward the field where a few stray apple trees grew.
There he saw her. Not the fox, not the little gray fluff-mobile, but something else, something big. The hump on her back and the massive paws told him this was no ordinary bear. She swatted at green apples that were nearly out of reach. Gerald knew he couldn’t shoot her. These bears were “endangered” after all. The forest roads around him had all been closed to protect the beast.
“Look at the size of that Momma,” he thought. “Grizzlies’ll be taking over the country if the tree-huggers have their way. They won’t be happy ’til the livestock’s gone and their women and kids are in shreds.”
He couldn’t shoot. Not like this, not unless she came after him. The bear went on picking apples as Gerald watched her feast.
“Come at me, bitch. I dare ya’,” he yelled. The bear raised her silver head for a second, then returned to popping whole fruit in her mouth with barely a chomp from her yellowing teeth. Gerald rested his gun on his knees. Movement in the corner of the field caught his attention. He turned in time to see the tiny fox dart away.
He looked back to the tree. It stood alone. He wasn’t sure from where the noise emerged, but it was a deafening groan. The first thing to go was the rifle. It flew from his arms as he was flattened on his back. The bear didn’t flinch under Gerald’s pounding fists. The pain was humane and brief.
Later that night, the bear finished her meal and waddled across the field. The fox waited in the wings, then crept out to examine the remains. There wasn’t much left: a blood-spattered leg of jeans, the laces of a shoe, some straggly hair. She didn’t see anything that she could really use, so she turned and trotted away.
[b]Author’s Note:[/b] Marian Wilson is a writer and registered nurse whose stories, poems and articles can be found in Potpourri, RN, American Journal of Nursing, the Dead Mule, Cayuse Press Book of Remembrance, Moondance, L’Intrigue and the Spokesman-Review. Her neighbors in North Idaho include hunters and grizzlies, but she has yet to meet the latter.
August 2002 | fiction
short fiction by Kathy Fish
([email]mr*********@***oo.com[/email])
[b]July[/b]
A hot breeze blows through the bedroom window. Jake Harvey looks up from his tattered Huckleberry Finn. The elm trees whisper. Their limbs bend, telling sign language secrets only he can decipher. People come and go from his little room but he doesn’t notice. He listens and watches and waits.
[b]August[/b]
Swaddled in the moonlight that streams through his window Jake Harvey likes to imagine himself the offspring of ghosts. He closes his eyes and raises his fingertips to the ceiling but he does not levitate. He sleeps and dreams of his sister Emily.
[b]September[/b]
Only his mother comes and goes from the little room. She reads Huckleberry Finn late into the night when Jake can’t sleep. A corner of the curtain brushes his cheek and he turns to see the elm trees offer up the full, fat moon to him like a communion wafer.
[b]Author’s Note:[/b] Kathy Fish writes both full length and flash length literary fiction. Two flash pieces were published in the premier issue of The Painted Moon Review and her story “Cardamom” will appear in Vol. 18 of Thunder Sandwich.
August 2002 | Janet Buck, poetry
We divided your stuff
on the tail of black limos
creeping the ragged streets.
My sister took the pretty towels —
the ones that said:
“Don’t touch, I stain;
Don’t fold, I tear.
Don’t use, I bite.”
All that was left was the lump of a chair
that cradled the crumbling straw.
From here, you argued with walls,
with a god you couldn’t see
but chose to trust no differently
than ducks fly south
imbued with promises of warmth.
An afghan draped across the back
to cover holes your spine had rubbed.
From here, you flipped like a caught trout
in the moon’s gray pail.
Watched as the rainfall bled
on fuzzy portraits of glass.
Listened as the furnace chirped
its bird-like morning arias.
From here, you grabbed an apron string
as love would jet from room to room.
Lit your pipe, gushed about her homemade pies.
Marked her lips with syrup spittle,
afterglow of Sunday waffles on the porch.
This old thing Grandma called
a wart on nice, an albatross of tackiness,
a dog to shoot, a rock to lift —
but never moved and dusted
like a precious mink in closets of the very rich.
Dimes between the cushion cracks.
Songs of sweat on beaten arms.
I had to keep this monument.
All your craters, all your perils,
all your Hells had settled here.
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
ten years spent in
light blue rooms with the
vague forms of women always
walking out the door
with this image of children in
barren villages
burning the american flag and
dancing on the graves of crack babies
always hovering at the
edge of my sight
maybe the taste of a stranger’s
pale luminous skin
when the phone rings at three
in the morning and a voice
that i can’t immediately place says
[i]i left him[/i]
says
[i]i love you[/i]
and it’s always at a point
where one season is giving way
to the next
where the boyfriend
has been arrested and the
daughter is screaming and the
president says that the first bombs
have been dropped
explains how the deaths of our enemies
are all victories for freedom
and i am hungover on the morning
of the abortion
i move slowly through the lines of protesters
with my hands balled into fists
with the phone number of
an old lover tucked into my wallet
and i am thinking of
her laugh
i am drinking someone’s blood
there is no chance for
any of us to
walk away from this unscarred
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
a headache
just after midnight
as i try to remember why
i ever started writing
at all
a day spent walking
empty streets from a
forgotten part of my life
and i am tired of the past
and of my job like an
impossible weight
and i am tired
the house is old
the windows distorted
and i’m afraid of the day
my son begins to build a wall
between us
i’m afraid he will not be
able to
escape being my son
and this scorched taste
in my mouth is all i’ve kept of
the five thousand wasted days
spent trying to save the
woman who loved pain
from herself
or maybe i can finally
be honest
in this dark room
and admit that i was
worried about no one
but me
maybe i should mention
how i walked away
without hesitation when
her needs threatened
to smother the person
i was hoping to
become
maybe all of the
drowning
can still be saved
